Stained Red
by Elementsofmine
Summary: She stained her eyes with the fruit of her love. NarKag


**Notes:** I need to eat. Badly.

**To:** Andrew, for this is the type of thing he seems to like. Or at least I think he likes.

**Inspired by:** Aiffe and hiding duh, the two best authors on probably all of ff . net.

**Rating: **PG-13

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His eyes are red.

She has seen brown and black, and the odd blue. There has been brown with silver flecks, and grey with black lacings. After a while, even amber gold became familiar. But red, never. So she knows his eyes are rare and he is one-of-a-kind.

She finds his eyes interesting, for lack of a better word. They are hooded and deep, red edged with black, fire enclosed by a trail of ash. Sleepy eyes that hide their owner's thoughts.

And it's not just his eyes that are different. The way he talks, so cruelly smooth. The way he moves (when he does), like a ghost skimming over a pond. He scares her, this individuality. She feels open to all perception when he's near, as though with merely a glance he can read her entire life and see the thousands of wars raging on inside her.

The woods bend as one. Trees whistle piercing tunes. No birds sound at night. She meant to come seeking the beautiful tawny gold, but instead found the gold seeking solace in grey. She shirked, and ran away. The wind trilled harshly, mocking her.

The two belonged together. She could not break them; she tried and tried and failed and failed and failed. So she ran. And found red eyes.

In the forbidden zone, they stood, halfway into the wood. She shivers and he watches, face half hidden by shadows.

"Tell me a story."

He smiles, maybe, mouth partly open.

"Once upon a year, there was an Emperor who loved the song of the nightingales. He thought it so beautiful, listening to them everyday in his garden, that he had some captured and caged."

"How horrible."

"Dear, the story's not over. Don't interrupt. The birds, once caged, stopped singing. The Emperor was wise, so he freed them and captured new ones."

She seems thoughtful.

"And so, was he happy?"

"My dear, no one ever is."

They leave together.

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They belong together. Their fingers interlace, their legs tangle. Every crook and bend finds a hollow to rest in, every joint a place to lie. Pale white on black smoke. Oleander on ash.

She has no heartbeat; they do. She has no feeling left in her numbed body; they do. To brush against him is feeling her skin. He is but an elongation of her self. They are two separate bodies, joined.

"I was looking for Inuyasha," she tells him, as though daring him to stop.

"And where was he," Naraku breathes.

She thinks of an answer to this.

"Ocher met grey," she says as an answer. None of them speak for stretch of silence. Only their soft breaths spill forth and create tiny clouds. He is the only one that understands her, and he nods without asking any further questions.

A flutter of movement, now his lips press into the hollow of her neck spilling and breathing soft clouds of miasma. She strains, not protesting; yet not completely succumbing to him. _This is wrong,_ she thinks. _What will Inuyasha say?_

Naraku seems to read her mind. "What will he say?" he queries.

She doesn't know. And frankly, after a while, she no longer cares. Which suits Naraku fine.

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He watches her eat the fruit, swallowing both jewel and seed. Her lips enclose around each ruby, tasting all there is to taste.

She loves pomegranates.

Eyes bigger than stomach, she insisted on having the entire fruit. Naraku doesn't want any, but he wants to watch her.

She chooses her next portion carefully, so carefully. She inspects them all thoroughly, as if afraid she'll forget ever eating them. Some humped, some sour. Some sweet and as tiny as a pebble, other humped and curved. Blood corn, he calls them.

He looks at her with no shame. "Ocher and grey make gold," he finally says, watching her shoulders tense, even as she keeps eating. He waits out, feeling her desperation for him to talk more filling in the silence.

"But grey and red make fire."

She stays silent.

"Fire melts gold."

He watches her eat in the dark until the sky brightens again, moon spit out by the swallowing masses of mist. Then he joins her.

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It is morning. The sun peeks over a rim of cloud, a sliver of a goddess's full belly. The children outside are playing and laughing.

_Kagome Kagome_

One girl in the middle closes her eyes and screams with laughter as the wind from the others ringing around her chases her hair into havoc. A boy picks up a long stick and begins poking her mischievously with it.  
_  
Kago no naka no tori wa,  
Itsu itsu deyaru.  
Yoake to ban ni.  
Tsuru to kame ga subetta,  
Ushiro no shoumen dare._

She scales the sides of the well, legs sore and useless. She passes the children, who immediately fall into a lull and stare at her go by. She is an Elder, and they watch her with fascination as she limps by. Her knees are scraped and red and her skirt torn. The ends of her hair flutter slightly, ragged flags in the wind. When she passes, the children sing again.

_Kagome, Kagome_

She pulls of her shoes and opens the screen door with a jerk as she walks through the kitchen. She does not say hello to the mother-figure inside, cutting pomegranates in halves.

_When does the bird inside the cage come out?  
At dawn and evenings.  
Who is in front of the back where a crane and turtle slipped and fell?_

"Kagome, you're back."

No reply. No confirmation of verbal sorts. But her head does turn at the sound.

The mother starts, and her eyes stray from the cutting board. The knife pokes itself into a finger by accident. Crimson stains jeweled fruit.

Kagome smiles, seeing the mirror hanging looped on a nail behind her mother's shoulders. The reflection is what she thought would be.

Her eyes are red.

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**Notes: **

Confused about Stained Red? Here's a brief talk-through.

SR is a story with the pairing Naraku/Kagome, with implied Inuyasha/Kikyou.

Kagome sees Inuyasha and Kikyou together while she was searching for her hanyou. This is implied by when she says 'gold seeking solace in grey'.

Naraku 'comforts' her by saying their eye colors, red and grey, make fire, which melts Inuyasha and Kikyou's gold.

The story he tells of the Emperor and nightingales relate to the child-rhyme, 'Kagome, Kagome' which is sung later in the story.

As one reviewer noticed, I did in fact have the Hades/Persephone myth in my head as I wrote SR. If you haven't learned of that myth, you're seriously missing out on quite a bit. The pomegranates play a role in both the legend and SR, as Naraku representing Hades the Underworld King and Kagome playing Persephone the maiden of Spring also do.

When she's with Naraku, Kagome stops caring about what Inuyasha thinks of her, leaving her self-conscious self behind. No pun intended.

The song, 'Kagome, Kagome' contains two lines that had a profound effect on me:

_When does the bird inside the cage come out?  
At dawn and evenings._

I took it as meaning, 'When does Kagome show her true self, away from worries and anxieties?'. She usually goes searching for Shikon shards with Inuyasha during the mid-day periods. The second line, if you follow that theory, tells that she does not 'come out' then. However, in SR, Kagome met Naraku at night (evening) and came home in the morning (dawn). Following the same theory, you can infer that Kagome shows her true self with Naraku and when she comes home at the end of the story, her true feelings are reflected through her eye color.

Kagome's mother is also cutting pomegranates. Could be seen as reflecting Demeter of the Hades/Persephone myth.

Hope that clears things up! Tell me if I left anything out.


End file.
